Cultivating Joy

The joy of the Lord is your strength. Nehemiah 8:10

I had one of those odd experiences while I was singing in church on Sunday. It was a beautiful sunny and crisp Sunday morning, I was glad to be at church and feeling quite loving towards all of those in my life. As I sang the words "the joy of the Lord is my strength" it was like a curtain in my mind opened. Now I am sure most people have pondered this phrase back in their early years - but for some reason this verse hit me as if I were hearing it for the first time and its meaning was suddenly new to me.

It was startling clear that when I choose to be joyful in the Lord, I have greater strength. On Sunday I was joyful in Him - as opposed to being joyful after eating a good meal or when someone pays me a compliment or when I can wear a smaller size or when my kids do something good. None of those things had happened on Sunday, but I was still joyful because I was confident of His love and His grace and His plans for my life. It dawned on me that by cultivating this true joy I am empowered to get through the hard and the boring and the sad and the confusing and the tempting times in my life. It showed me once again that I need to quit focusing on the situation and turn my focus to feeding and watering this joy that the Lord has given me.

Oddly enough I have been reading a devotional about joy (surely no coincidence) called Joy: A Godly Woman's Adornment by Lydia Brownback. The author highlights some ways to cultivate this true joy:

Grumbling about the hard things blocks our expectations of good things, and if we are not looking for the good things, we may fail to see them when they come.

The reason we lack joy in our trials is that we are set on an outcome that will make our lives easier.

The only way to joy is to interpret our circumstances by God's word rather than judge God by our circumstances.

Rather than yearning for God, we yearn for a manageable life, and eventually we don't yearn for Him nearly as much as we yearn for [insert your yearning here]. We pour so much of our energies into obtaining lesser joys that we lose our taste for the real one.

There is a direct link between joy and heartfelt obedience.